chiknsmack

Had we not had Juric you'd be saying he's "good enough for Atalanta but not for Saints".

I threw together a 25-man squad with mostly the most valuable free agents (according to Transfermarkt) and it came out to €89.4m. That's around €3.58m per player, which in the Championship would fall between Middlesbrough in 7th and West Brom in 8th. The values of the free agent players would be depressed by the fact that most of them are past their prime and have no "potential" left to realise, so on talent it's probably a better squad than those two. (The average age is 30.6, three years older than any other team in the Championship). On wages they'd probably want considerably more than they're worth (a former Barcelona/Inter/PSG/Al-Arabi player with a value of €2m like Rafinha would want higher wages than a young prospect valued at €2m like Matsuki) , and most of them have zero sell-on value. So it'd be a disaster financially. A first and second XI in a 4-2-3-1: Or in a 3-5-2: A decent number of players who in their prime were well above Championship level, and who even now cdaj at that level (though probably not for 90 minutes a game and 46 games). If the motivation was there and the injuries didn't hit too hard, is that a Championship playoff side that could go on to get 12 points in the PL?

Mateus Fernandes vibes. A little older, a little less hype, a little behind on the path (Fernandes had a year on loan in the Portuguese top flight before we signed him, Jander hasn't had any top flight experience yet) but the potential for a similar outcome.

He won a lot of defensive headers. That was the first time I'd seen much from him to get excited about.

Meslier is no better than Bazunu. With Ramsdale still on the books we were never going to be spending up on another proper #1, and with McCarthy on the wages he's on we were unlikely to push him down to #3 and make him the highest paid cone-picker-upperer in Championship history. Ryan on a free made perfect sense to me, but otherwise it was always going to be a random warm body to be #3. If you're looking for a positive, some people want Sargent from Norwich and the fact that we've picked up a player from them means our recruitment team is talking with theirs. He's their captain and has scored four in four this season so I don't know what our chances are, and on the negative side I'm wary that no PL clubs have come for him so they must not think he's good enough (though maybe 15 goals in the equivalent minutes of 28 games last season wasn't enough; this season at 25/26 could be the one where he scores 25/26 in 35 and gets his PL move whether his club gets promoted or not). He required surgery last season and missed a couple of months, so he has the perfect injury profile for a SR signing. And he speaks American so he and Downes can help each other settle in.

Someone posted his name (and nothing else) earlier in the thread. Probably just planting some ITK seeds.

We did it in the second half against Brighton, and won that half 2-1. On that occasion the two in midfield was Fraser and Charles, with Robinson, Archer, and Armstrong the front three. Obviously you want Fernandes in there somewhere too, so that forces Fraser out. But Still appears to want Fraser on the pitch, so that forces Armstrong out. BUT Still also appears to want Armstrong on the pitch, so that forces Archer (or Downs, or Stewart) out. If you want both Fraser and Armstrong in your front three (I don't, though it seems Still does for now) you either play Armstrong up top or you play him on the right with Fraser on the left (benching Robinson) and a striker up top. 3-4-3 also only gives you two midfielders, when our best three (Fernandes, Charles, Downes) are all very good. The more recent change is to play Fraser at wingback instead of Sugawara, which makes room for Armstrong on the right and a proper striker up the middle. But that still only gives you two midfielders, so instead against Stoke Still went with Fernandes on the right of the front three (it was more of a 3-4-2-1 than a 3-4-3), Downes and Charles as the midfield two, and Armstrong up top. Personally I think the correct 3-X-X formation with the squad we have is 3-5-2. You get all of Fernandes/Charles/Downes on the pitch, you can play Fraser on the right of the five, and you play two up top (so even if Armstrong has to play its him plus another striker). Though the downside of this is that Robinson doesn't fit; he's not a striker in a two and he's not really a wingback. It's difficult to accommodate Robinson, Armstrong, and Fraser in the same lineup. Especially if you also want Fernandes, Charles, and Downes. With three at the back you have those six plus one other as your midfield and attack, and with four at the back it's worse (you go down a CB but presumably go up two proper fullbacks rather than playing Fraser at FB, giving you six spots for those six midfield and attacking players). The obvious answer is to not play both Fraser and Armstrong, but it seems like Still rates their workrate and experience. Maybe that will change with Downs and Stewart being fully over their recent illnesses and the Stoke performance being pretty average with Armstrong up top. What does a 4-4-2 look like? Well for starters there's only two midfielders so Downes is on the bench. Then your wingers are Fraser and Robinson with zero depth (BBD? Edozie? Sugawara? We tried Armstrong on the right of the 4 in preaseason and he looked lost) behind them. Robinson shouldn't be asked to play 90 minutes 35+ times in his first year of senior football, and if you were to ask that of him he'd have more of a chance on the left of a front three than on the left of a midfield four where he'd have more defensive work to do. So 4 at the back means 4-3-3. All three main midfielders, and a front three of Robinson, a striker, and someone else on the right. If Fraser and Armstrong are nailed-on starters, one of them's your striker. So the difference between 4-3-3 and 3-4-3 is that in the former you have four defenders, three midfielders, and both Armstrong and Fraser in the front three, whereas in the latter you have four defenders (three CBs and a defensive wingback), two midfielders, Fraser at wingback, and room for a striker in the front three. Basically, do you want Downes or Downs? Of course, all of that changes with an injury (If any of Robinson/Fraser/Armstrong is out the other two play alongside a striker and the full midfield three, if any of the midfield three are injured you can make the like-for-like swap and bring in Smallbone or drop Fraser into midfield and play a striker) or new signing (maybe a midfielder leads to a return of Ralph's 4-triple 2; Charles and Downes behind Fernandes and the new guy behind two high-energy high-pressing forwards). And it all changes if Still doesn't see a need for both Fraser and Armstrong to play.

He starts the game with one striker and ends the game with three. Martin wouldn't be so flexible.

We have a Premier League quality player willing to play for us in the Championship, at a fee that's less than half of what he'd cost if he was English (or even coming from anywhere bar Russia), and a natural deadline of the transfer window SLAMMING shut. And instead of letting the player and his agent put pressure on the club president to accept the deal, you want to threaten to withdraw the deal and make the president even less enthusiastic about accepting it? We are one of the eight biggest teams in the second biggest league in England. They are the Russian champions who would be playing in the Champions League if not for the war. When framed like that you can see why the president might want a better landing spot for their captain and star who has been at the club since he was 17. We were hamstrung by PSR to a degree after the January window where Rasmus tried to keep us up. Next season that loss will have cycled off the books, so we'll be free to have a proper crack like Sunderland if we get promoted. We might not be able to spend quite as much as them because we already have a bit of deadwood on PL wages (as opposed to their now-deadwood on Championship wages), but we're also a chance to have a decent PL-level core (Ramsdale, THB, Charles, Fernandes, Dibling, Spertsyan, anyone else who handles the step up with a good Championship season behind them) to build around. Sounds like a job for Mark Bitcoin.

It's the same reason we signed Ings; if he's healthy he scores for fun. Unlike Ings he hasn't had a prolonged run of fitness and games (yet). Having scored 10 in 13 in the Championship for Sunderland, if he'd come back in November of our last Championship season (as he did) and stayed fit thereafter (as he didn't) it's not unreasonable to think he'd have scored 20 in 31 for us in the Championship. On the back of that he could well have scored hatfuls in the Premier League; the floor for recent 20-goal Championship strikers is Akpom/Morris/Armstrong/BBD while the ceiling is Toney/Gyokeres/Solanke. As it was he played the equivalent of 4.3 games in the PL and scored once; that's the equivalent of eight or nine in a full season, or more if you think he'd have done better with more fitness and confidence from a good Championship campaign behind him. Yes, "the best ability is availability". But as a club with limited funds, we can't afford many 10+ goal PL strikers - or even potential double-figure PL strikers - unless there's something wrong with them (eg. they might score 10+ in the PL if they stay fit (Ings, Stewart), or once they develop with experience (Downs, Mara)). Especially when we're in the Championship, as we were when we signed Stewart. We can't afford stars, we don't want has-beens, we don't want tried and proven not-good-enoughs, so we're left buying maybes. The thing with maybes is maybe they pan out or maybe they don't. Welcome to Southampton FC.

Stripes on (some of) the back though.

Bazunu Edwards THB Quarshie Downes Charles Dibling Fernandes Spertsyan Downs Archer That's a perfectly cromulent Premier League midfield with Robinson, Armstrong, and Smallbone as depth. Downs/Archer/Stewart building confidence in the Championship and handling the step up to the PL next season. Three young CBs also improving with experience. Ramsdale back from loan. Maybe three or four £30m new recruits. That's a side that wins a dozen games in the Prem rather than picking up a dozen points.